Visitors, click to subscribe below today for immediate unlimited access to UnionLeader.com and our e-Edition, a page-for-page replica of the newspaper. Subscribers help us deliver trusted news, information and resources to connect the Granite State.

Our editorial last week regarding President Trump siding with a Russian KGB thug vs. America, and then saying he misspoke, drew varied reactions. Of course, he then reversed course again and said what he said was just “fake news.” Your guess is as good as mine as to where he will be next week.

One caller, a lifelong Democrat, told me this was the first time he had EVER disagreed with our editorials. That’s quite something, considering I have been writing them here for close to 50 years. I don’t think I have agreed with all of them.

He said I had joined the anti-Trump “lunatics” and I should not pay any attention to anything Trump says, only what he does. He said Presidents always lie.

I am not so naïve as to think Presidents are always truthful, but there is a difference when one of them falls all over himself complimenting a thug, not once but several times in a news conference, reads a prepared statement the next day claiming he meant to say something else, and then reverses course again the day after.

Trump argued that he could either suck up to the guy or punch Putin in the mouth. There was no other choice.

I almost get the feeling Trump thinks he can fool all of the people, all of the time.

Trump Tweeted that, “So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki.”

If this group includes you, congratulations.

Another fellow wrote in to protest that our editorial lacked “constructive criticism.”

My main point was not so much addressing Trump’s shortcomings or expecting him to follow my advice as it was calling out the spineless Republicans in Washington who have failed to fully and clearly separate themselves from this guy. If they continue on this path, they may hold onto their cushy positions for awhile longer, but their party is going to wither and die. I thought that was constructive.

There were the usual suspects whose knee-jerk reaction to any Union Leader opinion that they don’t share is to say it never would have happened when “the Loebs ran the paper.”

One writer taking this line said my demeaning of the President was outrageous and never would have happened under the Loebs.

Right. When William Loeb wrote that President Eisenhower was “that stinking hypocrite in the White House” for not inviting U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy to a White House reception, I guess he was just trying to be helpful. Constructive criticism, don’t you know.